Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Houghton Mifflin has announced the upcoming publication of 100
YEARS OF THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, selected and edited by Lorrie Moore
and co-edited by Heidi Pitlor. A whopping 752 pages, the anthology, which
contains the work of only forty authors, will be released in October.

As could be expected with Lorrie
Moore at the helm, the selection of authors and their stories is first rate. The
earliest is Edna Ferber’s 1917 “The Gay Old Dog” and the most recent is Lauren
Groft’s 2014 “At The Round Earth’s Imagined Corners.” In between are an array
of wonderful stories arranged by decade.

George Saunders, one of my
favorites, is there with “The Simplica Girl Diaries,” from his fourth
collection, TENTH OF DECEMBER, which won the 2014 Folio Prize and was a
finalist for the National Book Award.

Monday, March 30, 2015

BREVITY MAGAZINE, the excellent Lit Magazine founded and fostered by the indispensable Dinty Moore, has sent out a call for help. Sarah Einstein has sent this letter to friends and subscribers:

​This is, really, a confession of love, though I suspect it’s not much of a confession… that you all already know that I love Brevity. I love it as a reader, because it has introduced me to so many wonderful writers, many of whom are just beginning their writing careers. I love it as a teacher of writing, because it allows me to build and rebuild my syllabi every semester around new and compelling works that lead my

Sunday, March 29, 2015

On April 18, the excellent UNC Program in the Humanities will
turn its attention to Jewish literature when the 2015 Ulhman Family Seminar
will be presented by Dr. Jonathan Hess, the Moses M.
and Hannah L. Malkin Distinguished Professor of Jewish History and Culture.

“Since the
mid-nineteenth century, literature has played a key role in the way Jews have
adapted to the modern world and confronted the challenges of secularization,
the dislocations of migration, and the traumas of anti-Semitism. But what exactly is Jewish literature? How does it relate to traditional Jewish
modes of engaging with sacred

Saturday, March 28, 2015

David Joy’s gritty debut novel,
WHERE ALL LIGHT TENDS TO GO, achieves something I never thought I’d see: his
characters make those in DELIVERANCE look almost like refined, cultivated human
beings.

Joy, who was born in Charlotte, has lived in North
Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains
since he was a teenager. A graduate of WesternCarolinaUniversity, he was
mentored by the great Ron Rash who he credits with being an important literary
influence.

WHERE ALL LIGHT TENDS TO GO is set
in Cashiers, North Carolina,
and the surrounding area. Jacob McNeely is the 18 year old son of a savage,
murderous father who controls a very large meth business

Friday, March 27, 2015

Francesca
Marciano’s collection of nine stories, THE OTHER LANGUAGE, won third prize in
this year’s Story Awards behind Elizabeth McCracken and Lorrie Moore. All three
writers are in excellent company.

The epigraph for
Mariano’s collection is from Derek Walcott: “To change your language you must
change your life.” The characters in these stories change their language (and
their countries) and thereby change their lives.

In the title
story, Emma, a twelve year old Italian girl, and her siblings are taken to a
small Greek village by their father. The children’s mother has died six months
earlier and their father hopes that “having a real adventure” will take the
children’s minds off their loss. Among the people they encounter in the Greek
town are two English boys. Emma is very taken with the younger one, Jack, and
“she felt a terrible regret for not having

Thursday, March 26, 2015

By now, the writers among us have begun applying to summer
workshops. It’s not too late for you. Although programs like Breadloaf at Middlebury, Vt.
are full, others are still accepting applications. Below are just a few with
their faculty lists.

SEWANEE WRITERS’
CONFERENCE

July 21 – August 2 on
the campus of Sewanee, The University of the South in Tennessee. Supported by the
Estate of Tennessee Williams.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Two things always get me thinking about Sicilian food: a
visit from my brother (the most recent was a week or so ago) and a trip to New
York in an often-futile search for real Sicilian restaurants.

Cefalu, Sicily

Notice I said Sicilian, NOT Italian. (Our grandfather was
born in the ancient and beautiful seaside town of Cefalu. Our great grandfather
came from Ventimiglia near Palermo.) There’s a difference. Just as Sicilians
have their own dialect, they have their own cuisine as well.

Sicily’s history is one of domination by larger powers:
Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Islamic, Norman, Catalan, Spanish – all of whom left
behind elements of their cuisine. Aristocratic Sicilians imported French chefs
called “Monzu” who brought classic techniques with them. To my mind,

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

BARK, Lorrie Moore’s collection of eight short stories was one of the three finalists for the 2014 Story Prize. Although the prize was won by Elizabeth McCracken for THUNDERSTRUCK, Moore’s BARK was named A Notable Book by both the New York Times and the Washington Post, and a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Financial Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Book Page. Not shabby recognition.

Moore’s first story collection in fifteen years, BARK plays with the various meanings of the word: the sound a dog makes, marijuana as “sparky bark”, the bark of trees, characters barking orders, the outer

Monday, March 23, 2015

The New York Pitch Conference ended today and Director
Michael Neff was right: I did learn a
lot.

This morning we did our final pitch to Michaela Hamilton,
Executive and Acquiring Editor at Kensington Publication and Editor-in-Chief of
one of its imprints, Citadel Press.

She has been with Kensington for fifteen years (but has been
an editor longer than that). She described the company as an independent
family-owned enterprise and pointed out that, after the Big Five publishing
houses, Kensington, established in 1974, is Number Six. The company is “devoted
to entertainment,” is “category-driven,” and specializes in what its audiences in
each category want.

She shared some interesting statistics: 40% of all book
sales are romance novels and that has remained steady, no matter what happens

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Today’s good news is that it’s stopped snowing. Navigating New York City on foot in
snow and ice is not an activity for sissies. Last night, to get out of the
weather, I cut through Penn Station to catch the 7th Avenue subway. I felt like
the ball in a hotly contested Foosball game. I stopped counting after the
32nd commuter shoved me out of his way. OK, so I exaggerate – but not
by much. And to think I used to do this every day – somehow it seems like a
rougher sport these days.

The city is quieter on a Saturday morning so I sprang for a
cab to get to the conference for Day 3. As soon as I got in, the driver
launched into a tirade about “these new moron drivers who don’t know how to
find

Saturday, March 21, 2015

And then there were thirteen – two of our group didn’t come
today. I don’t know whether they’ll be back tomorrow – I hope they didn’t run
screaming into the night. Maybe, instead, they met their soul mates in a
Village restaurant and took the red-eye to Phoenix to start a new life. Good plot
possibility there – feel free to steal it.

This morning, my group met with Sillisa Kenney, an associate
editor at St. Martin’s Press.

She began by discussing the role of an editor: “the
middleman between the author and the reader.” An editor, she said, is not only
a representative of the company but also of the reader so “Trust Your Editor”
should be the byword. “Trust and listen and try to put aside your ego and your
love for what you’ve written,” she urged. And always remember that publishing
is a business and the realities of the market affect us all.

While the volume of submissions has increased, Kenney said,
the number of outlets for sales has decreased. This is particularly true in
regard to mass market books. Changes in retail merchandising have resulted in a
reduction in shelf space in such outlets as Costco, Target

Friday, March 20, 2015

Was it only yesterday that I wrote that the prospect of the
New York Pitch Conference seemed both exhausting and exhilarating? I’ve
survived the first day I can tell you: it is definitely exhausting!

We started the day with what was billed as a “Pep-Scare
Talk” by the Director, Michael Neff, who told us, in no uncertain terms, that not
a single Conference participant has a manuscript ready to send anywhere. Even
if an agent or editor asked for our manuscript, he said, we should not send it
because “it is not ready.” I don’t dispute his expertise – after all, he’s been
directing these conferences for ten years. I am, however, a little puzzled by
such a categorical pronouncement since no one connected to the conference has
read any of the manuscripts. Is it not possible that at least one of the
participants has a polished gem? Apparently not.

In any event, we were then assigned to workshop groups but
not on the basis of genre as I had thought. It’s unclear how they decided who
would

Thursday, March 19, 2015

I’m in Manhattan to attend the New York Pitch Conference
from early this morning through Sunday. My posts during this time will be about
the Conference and what I learn there.

The Conference is limited to 65 participants who each have a
completed manuscript in one of these genres: upmarket and literary fiction,
general fiction, serious and light women’s fiction, historical fiction,
military fiction, mystery/thriller and detective, historical romance,
paranormal romance, all forms of adult fantasy/SF, young adult and middle grade
fantasy/SF, memoir and narrative nonfiction.

Twenty-four acquisition editors are attending. They are from
such publishing houses as Akashic Books, Berkeley/Penguin, Berkeley

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Her 15th mystery, MURDER ON THE CHAMP DE MARS, pits
protagonist Aimée Leduc's new maternal instincts against her determination to
finally solve the mystery surrounding her father's murder. The story unfolds in
1999 in the seventh arrondissement or neighborhood, of Paris, home to the elite
of the city.

The spark that enflames the investigation is the appearance
of Nicu, a French gypsy boy (manouche). He convinces Aimée to go with him to
see his dying mother, who wants to undo a past injustice by revealing a secret
that involves Aimée's father's death.

But, when Aimée and Nicu arrive at the hospital, the boy's
mother has vanished and cannot survive for long without the medicines and
procedures necessary to keep her alive. When Nicu is killed, Aimée

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Natalia Revuelta Clews died last week at the age of 88. Who,
you may ask? “Naty” Revuelta was a beautiful (and married) Cuban socialite who
became enamored of a imprisoned revolutionary, the also-married illegitimate
son of a Cuban landowner: Fidel Castro. Naty wrote to him while he was in
prison after the failed attempt on the Moncada barracks. He wrote back and a
passionate exchange of love letters ensued. She sent him books, gave money to
his compatriots, and allowed them to hold meetings in her home. When Castro was released
from prison, he very briefly met her, consummated the relationship and then
went off, leaving her pregnant with their daughter who was born in 1956. She
expected him to come

Monday, March 16, 2015

In 1993, Janice Sage won the
Central Lovell Inn and Restaurant in an essay contest. After running the bed
and breakfast for twenty years, Ms. Sage, now 68, is ready to give it to the
next owner: the person who writes the best 200 word essay on “Why I Would Like
To Own and Operate a Country Inn.”

According to the Inn’s website, the
property sits on 12 acres, fifteen minutes outside Portland, Maine. In the main
building, there is a parlor and dining rooms on the first floor. On the second
floor, there is a den

Sunday, March 15, 2015

It seems like some politician or celebrity is always
apologizing these days for having “misspoken” about someone or something. The
apologies usually are along the lines of, “I’m sorry you were offended by…” as opposed
to, “I was a stupid doofus and deserve to be put on an ice floe and shoved out
to sea for having said…”

Today, I’m going to write about a book that might possibly
be considered offensive by some uptight folks – mostly Free Will Southern
Baptists – in today’s climate. Certainly, some of the reviews on Good Reads did
seem awfully prissy. But, let me make one thing perfectly clear: Clyde Edgerton
is NOT a stupid doofus. Far from it. He’s a treasure and does NOT deserve to
get anywhere near an ice floe. So, all you grim and scowling “Gotcha’ Squads” should
go look somewhere else because I have no intention of saying, “I’m sorry you
were offended by…”

Edgerton’s very first novel, RANEY, written in 1985 is,
simply, hilarious. It is also, less simply, very wise.

Then, too, it has the best jacket blurb I’ve ever read. From Roy
Blount, Jr.: “A funny, deft, heartening book. If I were single, I’d marry it.” Me,
too. I not only laughed out loud, I kept following my husband around the house
yelling, “You gotta’ hear this. Lemme read this to you.”

The book details the engagement and marriage of Raney Bell and
Charles Shepherd. Raney and her family worship at the Bethel Free Will Baptist
Church where folks know what’s right and what’s just plain wrong. Her daddy
owns the Hope Road General Store. The Bells are small-town, conservative folks
who don’t drink demon alcohol or curse or look at dirty magazines or socialize
with African-Americans. Raney attended Listre Community College and, as the
book opens, is newly engaged to Charles Shepherd, the assistant librarian at
the Community College.

Charles’ family is from big-city Atlanta. His father’s a
doctor. His mama’s a vegetarian. They’re Episcopalian and liberals and involved
in

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Elizabeth McCracken’s THUNDERSTRUCK & OTHER STORIES
(which won the 2015 Story Prize) is her first collection of short stories in
twenty years. It was worth the wait. There are nine beautiful, finely crafted
stories.

Common themes become apparent: children are lost, bullied,
starved, wounded. There are fraught relationships between parents and children.
Happiness is elusive. Tragedy lies in wait and catches its victims by surprise.

But, as Sylvia Brownrigg wrote in the New York Times
(6/5/14): “The fact that there is nothing depressing about the ubiquity of
accident and disaster in ‘Thunderstruck and Other Stories’ is a powerful
testament to the scratchy humor and warm intelligence of McCracken’s writing.”

“Something Amazing” is a grim (and somewhat Grimm) story of
two mothers. The first is laid low by grief and haunted by her young daughter
who has died from lymphoma. She has sealed off the girl’s room but Missy is
“everywhere in the house, no matter how their mother scrubs and sweeps and
burns and purges.” The dead girl’s brother is left to cope with his mother
alone:

“ ‘I would die without you,’ she tells
her son one morning. He knows it’s true, just as he knows he’s the only one who
would care. Sometimes he thinks it wouldn’t be such as bad bargain, his mother’s
death for his own freedom."

Because of her odd behavior and appearance, the neighborhood
children believe this grieving mother is a witch. A dirty, bullied child comes
to her door. She takes him in and bathes him (even though her inner voice tells
her ‘you can’t just bathe someone else’s child’). She unseals the dead

Friday, March 13, 2015

April is National Poetry Month! The Fifth Annual Press 53/Jacar Press “Gathering of Poets” will take place on Saturday, April 25, 2015 at the Historic Brookstown Inn in Winston-Salem. North Carolina Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson will read and there will be four workshops included along with an optional one on Sunday morning (April 26). Details and Registration at press53.com.

MARCH 14 |More Poetry

Carolyn York, President of the NC Poetry Society, will speak at the next meeting of Pittsboro Writers’ Morning Out on Saturday March 14 at 1:00 p.m. (Yeah, I know, but they used to meet in the morning.) All writers, any genre, are invited. It’s held in the Barley Lounge at Carolina Brewery. Writers’ Morning Out is sponsored by the NC Writers’ Network and led by Al Manning. Check out the blog at pittsboro-wmo.blogspot.com.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Katherine Swynford (née de Root), orphaned daughter of a favored knight, arrives at Queen Phillippa’s court on an ancient, balking horse, excited and hoping for a good marriage. The prioress whose poor priory has cared for Katherine hopes to receive compensation for that care. Neither is satisfied. The Queen is ill and has no thoughts for either the priory or Katherine.

But the coarse Sir Hugh Swynford has had thoughts since first seeing Katherine. Finding her alone, he forces himself on her, only to be stopped by his lord, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and future king of Castile. John is repulsed by Katherine’s grey eyes and happy to approve Swynford’s face-saving request to marry Katherine. Only later does John remember the grey eyes he loved as a boy, those of the woman who raised him and died of the plague.

So begins the love affair between John and Katherine that spanned thirty-five years. Their four children, legitimized by both king and pope after their marriage three years before John’s death in 1399, were the ancestors of the Stuarts and the Tudors—the royal line of England.

Ann Seton, writing under the pen name Anya Seton wrote a definitive story of their relationship in KATHERINE. In continual print since it

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Having confessed to a major writer’s crush on Allan Gurganus, I thought I’d add a few words of explanation today. Well, of course, for starters, how could you not love a man who founded “Writers Against Jesse Helms?”

­But there’s more, much more. Damned if I can find it again, but somewhere I read a quote from Gurganus that went something like this, “I write the funniest books I know how to write about the most terrible things I can imagine.” I can’t find where I read this and maybe I made it up because I wanted him to say it. It’s certainly evidenced in his writing. As a native Alabamian, I recognize this from deep in my roots: the storytellers I grew up with, the ones I later read: Faulkner, Welty, O’Connor – all of them mixed humor and the "terrible things" of life.

Of course, Gurganus can write pure hilarity. “Nativity, Caucasian,” one of the twelve stories in WHITE PEOPLE, is an example. It begins:

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Edmund de Waal, Geoff Dyer and John Jeremiah Sullivan, have won the 2015 Windham Campbell Prize for nonfiction. Each of them will get a $150,000 award to be presented at Yale in September.

Photo by Hannah Jones

De Waal is the author of THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES: A FAMILY’S CENTURY OF ART AND LOSS. If you haven’t read it, please get up right now and go to your nearest library or book store and get a copy. We’ll wait right here until you’re back.

Edmund de Waal is a British ceramicist whose work has been exhibited in major museums around the world. (As an aside, I should say that I have seen a few examples of it in the excellent collection of post-1940 pottery and ceramics at the Mint Uptown Museum in Charlotte – worth the drive, indeed.)

THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES is a family memoir tracing the history of the wealthy and influential Ephrussi family. As de Waal has written, “It is the story of the ascent and decline of a Jewish dynasty, about loss and diaspora and about the survival of objects.”

The Ephrussis were bankers who spread their empire from Odessa to the capitols of Europe in the 19th century. Charles Ephrussi eschewed the family business to study and collect art. He moved to Paris and became an early supporter of the impressionists and is said to be pictured in Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party.” He is also said to have been Marcel Proust’s model for Swann in

Monday, March 9, 2015

All right, here’s your assignment. In as few or many words as you need, please explain to me why Alice Walker told her audience at the San Miguel Writers Conference that Elizabeth Gilbert’s THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS is a “wonderful” book. Please. I’m serious.

The first hundred pages read as if Gilbert had come across some botany books and wanted to make sure she stuffed every single fact they contained into this novel. Amongst the botanical esoterica are sketches of the 19th century Whittaker family: the crude, low-born patriarch who has made a fabulous fortune in botanical pharmaceuticals; his stolid Dutch wife, Beatriz; and their only surviving child, Alma. Alma is a large, homely, awkward girl who grows up to be a large, homely, awkward but accomplished botanist, the author of several well-received scholarly books.

Then there’s Prudence, neé Polly, an incredibly beautiful child, whose father, a worker on the Whittaker estate, has murdered his wife and killed himself. She is taken into the Whittaker’s stately home, not as a

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Allan Gurganus, on whom I have a serious writer’s crush, will be the special guest at a meeting of Bookends book club on Thursday, March 19th at 4 p.m. The meeting will be at McIntyre’s Books, Fearrington Village, Pittsboro, NC.

Gurganus’ terrific collection of short stories, WHITE PEOPLE, will be discussed. For more information, call (919) 542-3030.

March 31 | Glimmer Train deadline looms

A March 31 deadline for Glimmer Train literary journal submissions is looming. The topic is “Family Matters” and the first place winner gets $1,500 and publication in Issue 96. Second prize is $500; third place gets $300.

The editors say they’re looking for stories “about families of all configurations.” Most submissions, they add, run 1,500-6,000 words but up to 12,000 words is acceptable. For details and to submit, go to glimmertrain.com/familymatters.html.

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Pat Shipman’s newest book, THE INVADERS: HOW HUMANS AND THEIR DOGS DROVE NEANDERTHALS TO EXTINCTION (the subject of an earlier blog post) is now the #1 best seller in three different categories: Biology of Fossils, Paleontology and Physical Anthropology. It’s getting big play in the UK as well as here. You can order it from Harvard University Press, Amazon, and elsewhere. Congratulations to the author!

Friday, March 6, 2015

I may have been the last person on earth who had not read Anthony Doerr’s ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE. Forty-one weeks on the New York Times Print/Hardcover Best Sellers List and counting. National Book Award Finalist. One of the Ten Best Books of 2014 selected by the New York Times Book Review.Well, I finally remedied this lamentable lapse in my reading life this week. It’s a page-turner, all right. Laundry, cooking, feeding the (very patient) dogs – everything was ignored while I read. And read. And read.

Set mainly in France and Germany in 1934-1945 (with brief chapters in 1974 and 2014), it interweaves the stories of two young people: Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind, motherless girl who lives with her father, the

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Prime Number Magazine (a Press 53 publication) announces the 2015 Prime Number Magazine Awards with prizes and/or publication for their top three entries in Poetry, Short Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

The Burlington (NC) Writers
Club is now accepting entries for its 2015 Adult Writers Contest. It is open to
writers in Alamance, Caswell, Chatham, Durham, Guilford, Orange, Randolph and
Rockingham counties. Cash prizes will be offered in six categories and rules are
below.Deadline is
March 14.

Manuscripts, including poetry, must be the original, unpublished work of the contestant, not pending publication, and must not have received a first place award in any competition.

Writers may submit one (1) entry in each category. No entry may be placed in more than one category.

Poetry Requirements: Two (2) original or clear copies. NO index cards.

• 1st copy: Place member/non-member, county, title, category, name, address, telephone, e-mail address at top right of page.• 2nd copy: Do NOT place name on entry. Place TITLE ONLY at top of page. 100 lines maximum, 11 or 12 point size font, single spacing, on 8½ x 11 white plain paper. No illustrations.

Monday, March 2, 2015

On Wednesday night, March 4, Ron Rash will be reading – it’s the inaugural event of a new reading series honoring former Duke University professor Reynolds Price.

Presented by the Duke University English Department, the reading will take place at 8 p.m. at Smith Warehouse, Bay 4 off Main Street and Buchanan Boulevard in Durham. It’s free and open to the public.

Rash will read from his new short story collection, SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE, which Janet Maslin called “a magnum opus” in her NY Times review. The Times of London said, “Rash can create a character in a single sentence; this is the great American short story at its best.”

In addition to this collection, he has published five novels, the bestselling SERENA, as well as THE COVE, ONE FOOT IN EDEN,

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Redbird Theater Company is presenting a festival of new
one-act plays by North Carolina playwrights March 13-22 at the Carrboro Arts
Center.

The plays include: PROPERTY by Dana Coen; THE FIRE OF FREEDOM by Howard
L. Craft (inspired by the book by David Cecelski), LINNAEUS FORGETS by Marianne
Gingher and Debby Seabrooke (adapted from the story by Fred